Supporting Hooks

[00:00:00] Well hello, this is The Daily Five with Aurooba, that's me, where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go.

[00:00:15] So, I have this long and sprawling pothos houseplant. Its main pot sits in between my living and dining area. And the vines climb up with the help of hooks and spread out in each direction, slowly making their way across the entire length of my home, and also spreading across the ceiling, like across the depth of the ceiling.

[00:00:40] And as it grows, we add more hooks to support it, all the way across the ceiling, any time it needs to go up and down a wall. But there is such a thing as adding a hook too soon. And said a thing as adding a supporting hook too late. Add a supporting hook too soon and the vine is thin, weak, and vulnerable to most changes it might experience later if we ever adjust the position of the pothos.

[00:01:08] Add a supporting hook too late and the vine might hang too low, too long, and be injured with interaction with human heads as we walk past. As things grow and change. As you grow and change, you need a certain level of support, and the timeliness of that support makes a big difference. It's a bigger difference, in fact, than you might realize if you haven't spent time thinking about it.

[00:01:35] When I let the vine hang down for a while, letting it experience a bit more motion, maybe some wind, et cetera, the vine strengthens itself. The main vine in that area thickens. It becomes more robust. In fact, even the leaves reach out a little bit better. If I add the hook too soon to a section of the vine, that vine remains much thinner.

[00:01:58] And although at that point It is at its most flexible and I can make it do pretty much whatever I want. At some point, if I ever need to move the vine, the stress of changing positions and having to deal with the shifting environmental factors as a result may cause that piece of the vine to start dying.

[00:02:18] We grow stronger under stress. Not stress like, oh my god, I'm drowning in work, but stress as in conditions that are not completely Calm, and the status quo. A lot of us will grow regardless, but put us in a slightly harder, slightly less calm condition at regular intervals with timely support, and not only do we grow more, we grow better.

[00:02:46] We grow stronger. Now, too much stress, or prolonged stress, and all that growth becomes weak and bad, and sometimes causes even more harm than not having any stress at all. And I'll also tell you this. We all need a little help. We all need someone who looks out for us a little bit. Sometimes we have to ask someone to do it, and sometimes it starts to happen organically.

[00:03:13] My pothos cannot climb my inorganic walls and creep across my ceilings on its own. It needs a little help, in the form of these hooks we design and regularly 3D print. The times when I have best grown is when there was stress, but there was also adequate and experienced support, ready to help me if I fall, ready to help me course correct if I start to go off the rails, but also comfortable hanging back and letting me stumble a little and figure, figure things out myself.

[00:03:47] And for most of us, this is a true scenario, a good scenario. Support is good in the right doses. Stress is good in the right doses. Things that enable growth are good. So, what am I trying to say here? Many things, I suppose, but look for your supporting hooks. And maybe consider if you could be someone else's too.

[00:04:18] Thanks for listening. Same time tomorrow?